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On the Shelf 138: Bob Dylan
Apr. 16th, 2015 04:10 pmBob Dylan records a new album. It's all Sinatra covers. AARP is giving it away free to it's members.
Yeah, that may be the most talked about record of the year.
Let's start out with one point. It's maybe not what you think of as a Sinatra tribute. This is not "My Way", "All the Way", "New York, New York", "Chicago"
It is all songs that Sinatra did perform at one time.
That probably helps out quite a bit.
Dylan (in his interview with AARP) says he has done songs in this style before, so he deosn't see what the fuss is about.
Dylan knows his own catalogue, better than I do, but it's hard to think of where Dylan has performed in this style, and certainly, if he has then not as many songs in one spot.
So, one can almost not imagine "Lounge Zimmerman" until you hear it.
Then once you hear it, it makes sense, but then how do you describe it.
I have a hard time reconciling it with anything that I know of in the Dylan catalog, even from the Time Out of Mind or later era.
Leonard Cohen certainly comes to mind. Only if Cohen seems like the only person who gets away with making a living making songs like this at his age to this audience.
Cohen isn't exactly right either, and the music here is simplistic in terms of lyrical makeup as you might hear on a recent Cohen album.
In a strange way, Tom Waits comes to mind. Though certainly, Dylan is smoother (never thought you would have to think about such things) than Waits. In fact, that may be the best comparison- Waits in his "Franks Wild Years" moment. That was Waits as a gravelly Sinatra-obsessed crooner, which is sort of what this is.
(I did decide to look to see allmusic compared this album to, and some thoughts I didn't think of but made sense came out- John Prine, John Hiatt, Van Morrison- still none of these are a satisfying comparison)
In any case (and I have to say I am guilty of not yet spending a lot of time with it yet), but I do really enjoy this record. It's not quite to the level i enjoyed Cohen's Popular Problems from last year, and it probably won't have as lasting as an impression on me as Time Out of Mind.
That said, it's this peculiar album (seemingly peculiar depending on which direction Dylan goes next) with this mood of 'late night intimacy' (not unlike "Franks Wild Years" or from the same time frame Jarmusch's"Mystery Train", but it's quite a nice surprise.
Yeah, that may be the most talked about record of the year.
Let's start out with one point. It's maybe not what you think of as a Sinatra tribute. This is not "My Way", "All the Way", "New York, New York", "Chicago"
It is all songs that Sinatra did perform at one time.
That probably helps out quite a bit.
Dylan (in his interview with AARP) says he has done songs in this style before, so he deosn't see what the fuss is about.
Dylan knows his own catalogue, better than I do, but it's hard to think of where Dylan has performed in this style, and certainly, if he has then not as many songs in one spot.
So, one can almost not imagine "Lounge Zimmerman" until you hear it.
Then once you hear it, it makes sense, but then how do you describe it.
I have a hard time reconciling it with anything that I know of in the Dylan catalog, even from the Time Out of Mind or later era.
Leonard Cohen certainly comes to mind. Only if Cohen seems like the only person who gets away with making a living making songs like this at his age to this audience.
Cohen isn't exactly right either, and the music here is simplistic in terms of lyrical makeup as you might hear on a recent Cohen album.
In a strange way, Tom Waits comes to mind. Though certainly, Dylan is smoother (never thought you would have to think about such things) than Waits. In fact, that may be the best comparison- Waits in his "Franks Wild Years" moment. That was Waits as a gravelly Sinatra-obsessed crooner, which is sort of what this is.
(I did decide to look to see allmusic compared this album to, and some thoughts I didn't think of but made sense came out- John Prine, John Hiatt, Van Morrison- still none of these are a satisfying comparison)
In any case (and I have to say I am guilty of not yet spending a lot of time with it yet), but I do really enjoy this record. It's not quite to the level i enjoyed Cohen's Popular Problems from last year, and it probably won't have as lasting as an impression on me as Time Out of Mind.
That said, it's this peculiar album (seemingly peculiar depending on which direction Dylan goes next) with this mood of 'late night intimacy' (not unlike "Franks Wild Years" or from the same time frame Jarmusch's"Mystery Train", but it's quite a nice surprise.
